Misc steam railway, traction, station and rail-related news
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existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Ugly AND brutal. Amazing bits of kit. Although, TBF, and from the same stable...Maybe, but...
Ugly AND brutal. Amazing bits of kit. Although, TBF, and from the same stable...
Indeed, and also from Bulleid's drawing board:
As for the Q1 - and with apologies for putting a car on a train thread - the aesthetics of it remind me of the MG Metro 6R4 rally car:
There's something of the same brutal functionality about it, to the point where it's so ugly it's actually impressive.
As I understand it the main aim of the 'air smoothed' casing was so they could stick the locomotives through the carriage washer. Any aerodynamic benefits were marginal at best - as they were with pretty much all steam engines, with the partial exception of the A4s. Did look good though.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I was going to reply to say much the same thing. Bulleid's stuff all had a certain brutish idiosyncrasy, but the Spam cans managed to combine it with a businesslike elegance that most of the other streamliners never quite achieved.
And, let's face it, he even managed to make the humble EMU look like the railway equivalent of a muscle car
The Spamcan did have the merit of not looking like an upturned bath, unlike Mr Stanier's effort:
Or the crappest attempt at streamlining a steam engine ever, courtesy of the Great Western:
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Yeah, I had the Stanier in mind when I was being rude about the other streamliners. It's ugly, but not ugly enough to be impressive, the way the Q1 and Leader were.The Spamcan did have the merit of not looking like an upturned bath, unlike Mr Stanier's effort:
Or the crappest attempt at streamlining a steam engine ever, courtesy of the Great Western:
The LNER A4s don't really feature on the uglyspectrum, in my view - they're quite pretty, and still look amazingly modern.
Oh I think the A4s are stunning things. Let's have a gratuitous pic:
Actually, let's have a gratuitous vid of Bittern on the 90mph run a few years ago:
davesgcr
Reading books
As I understand it the main aim of the 'air smoothed' casing was so they could stick the locomotives through the carriage washer. Any aerodynamic benefits were marginal at best - as they were with pretty much all steam engines, with the partial exception of the A4s. Did look good though.
A run through a washer would of course have washed off much of the essential lubrication on the motion. Urban myth.
Though it would have made manual cleaning a lot easier. They were basket case locomotives in any case for reliability and maintenance - until de-streamlined and massively rebuilt. Look good though. .
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
Maybe, but...
an 'austerity' pacific - like this only bigger - did get as far as the drawing board...
davesgcr
Reading books
To this day - I just do not get it how Bulleid (a most interesting chap with real vision and some great technical ideas) managed to get that build of Pacifics known as Spamcans through as "mixed traffic engines for the war effort" , I suppose there was too much going on , and the Railway Executive Committee were not powerfull enough at the time to say stop - and - even taking existing Southern designs - say "just build another batch of S15 locomotives - you have the plans and most of the castings etc) - or better still another batch of 8F's. That nice Mr Stanier will send you down some plans and am sure he can release a few technical bods to Eastleigh / Ashford or wherever -even Brighton.
I picked up the wartime diaries of E J MIssenden of the Southern not that long ago - fascinating read - and were it not for my latent GWR background , - the Southern was the place to be for real action and interest in WW2.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
And, let's face it, he even managed to make the humble EMU look like the railway equivalent of a muscle car
or more so
and pubs on wheels
Also responsible for the tavern car, complete with fake brickwork and half-timbering:
edit - oops, missed the 'pubs on wheels' link in the last post
edit - oops, missed the 'pubs on wheels' link in the last post
editor
hiraethified
I'd love to get pissed in one of them - and the public loved them:and think these buffet cars as well (from the mid 30s Portsmouth electric stock)
not convinced that the sharp edges sticking out of the walls was a great idea especially for anyone standing close to them when the train went over a rough junction...
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
alternatively, waterloo and city line tube trains (entered service 1940, not replaced until the 90s)
and a steam locomotive that ran on peat not coal (for the Irish state railways)
as an aside on the 'merchant navy' class, somewhere, i've seen a cartoon (possibly drawn for the southern railway's magazine) about a driver of a conventional locomotive who 'borrowed' two advert hoardings and attached them to the sides of the boiler to make it more modern
and a steam locomotive that ran on peat not coal (for the Irish state railways)
as an aside on the 'merchant navy' class, somewhere, i've seen a cartoon (possibly drawn for the southern railway's magazine) about a driver of a conventional locomotive who 'borrowed' two advert hoardings and attached them to the sides of the boiler to make it more modern
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
alternatively, waterloo and city line tube trains (entered service 1940, not replaced until the 90s)
and a steam locomotive that ran on peat not coal (for the Irish state railways)
as an aside on the 'merchant navy' class, somewhere, i've seen a cartoon (possibly drawn for the southern railway's magazine) about a driver of a conventional locomotive who 'borrowed' two advert hoardings and attached them to the sides of the boiler to make it more modern
That peat burner isn't as ugly as a lot of his stuff, but it does look rather as if it has two backs and no front.
It does, actually. So in other words, Bulleid made the beast with two backs!
On the subject of unconventional steam engines, there were various experiments with cab-forward designs, not least in the US. Pretty sure this wasn't the only Mallet to be laid out this way:
Wikipedia is also throwing up pictures of this attempt in Italy:
It kind of looks as if they couldn't be arsed to design a normal cab, so just sliced the end off a diesel engine and used that instead.
In the two immediately above his position was the same as in a conventional engine running tender-first.
In Bulleid's Leader the fireman worked in a compartment in the middle, where he was effectively pot-roasted. ASLEF threatened to boycott the prototypes because the working conditions were so bad.
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StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
The stokers in "Turbinia" had a similar experience - although their black hole was provided with positive air pressure to prevent blowbacks from the firebox ...
www.ipernity.com
TBA - Stokers' hole - TBA - Turbinia
By StoneRoad2013. Teams of two stokers worked down here, there is another aft of the boiler. To improve combustion - and to prevent blowbacks - this area was pressurised; which meant the stokers had t…
www.ipernity.com
teuchter
je suis teuchter
That Mallet one seems to have the tender at the opposite end of the loco from the cab though - so how does the coal get into the boiler? Or does the fireman have his own compartment down that end?
It does, actually: I must have been thinking of something else when I typed that, or just not had enough coffee.
Think the fireman must have been in a compartment at t'other end in that case.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Must have made it a lonely job. You'd think that there might also be a problem if the driver and fireman can't communicate with each other, but maybe that's not actually necessary.It does, actually: I must have been thinking of something else when I typed that, or just not had enough coffee.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Not sure, but that Mallet may well have been oil-fired ... there looks to be plenty of tank space in that tender, but no coal space. Also, the firebox and smokebox layout looks 'normal'.
(my experience, such as it is, is with coal-fired ng Garretts plus oil-fired Fairlies converted back to coal.)
TiG - WHR Garrett-87 par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity
(my experience, such as it is, is with coal-fired ng Garretts plus oil-fired Fairlies converted back to coal.)
TiG - WHR Garrett-87 par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity
hash tag
Books, not bombs
Indeed, and also from Bulleid's drawing board:
As for the Q1 - and with apologies for putting a car on a train thread - the aesthetics of it remind me of the MG Metro 6R4 rally car:
There's something of the same brutal functionality about it, to the point where it's so ugly it's actually impressive.
Went on Tangmere once or twice before she went in for her overhaul. She's a beautiful looking thing, purposeful. I see the had a near miss in Bath in 2012 - I might have been on that.
Well, the auto-trains managed with just a system of bells for communication between driver and fireman so it probably wasn't insurmountable but it probably wasn't ideal either. One thing that always comes across strongly to me from reading railwaymen's memoirs is how much an inexperienced fireman depended on the driver for route knowledge and general advice, and that would obviously have been impossible if they were at opposite ends. I think StoneRoad might be right in this case, though, and that Mallet might have been oil-fired.
That was an alarming incident with the potential to cause quite a serious accident, although not as serious as the near miss it had at Wootton Bassett in 2016.
